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Monday, June 2, 2014

Persy -- Starlighter by Bryan Davis

What's this?? A REVIEW??? Did anyone else know those ever happened here? Seriously, it's been like, two or three months. Sorry about that. My bad.

Jason's a young man living on the human world where few people still believe the stories of dragons and human slaves. But his brother is one of those few, determined to save the people who, a century ago, were captured by dragons and taken to another world as slaves. Jason himself isn't sure he believes the stories, but when his brother disappears in search of the lost ones, the quest is left up to him. But first he must rescue Elyssa from the dungeons and accept her strange, perceptive abilities...

Meanwhile, Koren lives as a dragon slave, prized for her red hair and green eyes and bewitching storytelling abilities. But what do the dragons really have in store for her? And is it true that they were enslaved against the will as the humans say, or did the dragons really rescue them from an even worse fate?

It's not a bad fantasy adventure. It's a relatively fast read, so it doesn't feel like you've wasted your life away reading it or anything. Honestly, it's just not good enough to spend a ton of time on. Aside from Arxad the dragon, all of the characters are very one-dimensional and flat. Don't get me wrong, plenty of them are likeable. I honestly love Randall and Tibalt, but they're still pretty flat, plus they're only secondary characters. Jason and Koren certainly aren't bad for main characters, in fact they're pretty cool themselves. And Elyssa's not awful or anything. But... they're all just pretty boring. The character interactions as well are just kind of... flat.

The plot doesn't really make up for it, unfortunately. Lots of the adventure seemed pretty pointless, making the whole thing unnecessarily complicated. The whole mess with them falling down the bottomless pit and floating down the river and everything totally went over my head and I had no idea why any of it was happening. And then Elyssa's always coming up with "brilliant" schemes that seem totally pointless, like sending Jason out to die while she works on stopping the flood. Why didn't she just try to stop the flood first and then send out Jason? She's supposed to be super smart, but she just strikes me as kind of distracted.

If I were to sum up this book in two words, they would be "needlessly complicated." I think if it had been edited down a bit more it would've been really something, but as is it kind of reads like an early draft I wrote when I was twelve. Tons of twists and turns and delays and puzzles and not much else.

I will say that the Black Egg gives me genuine creeps. That part was extremely well done. When he's trying to convince Koren, I actually wasn't sure for a minute if the Black Egg was good or bad. And the fact that I was so unsure and on edge made it so much more interesting. It's honestly one of the few reasons I'm looking forward to finishing the book series.

--Persy

You might like this if you: like dragons; like Christian fantasy; like simple fantasy adventures; don't care about the characters; have time to kill; or if your ancestors were kidnapped by dragons.

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About Us

Persy
I'm Persy, and I'm an American college student who loves to read and loves to recommend good books! I'll do my best to help you steer clear of the worst of young adult and adult fiction, but don't be surprised to see some manga and children's books as well.

Arty
I'm Arty, also an American college student who loves to read and recommend good books, which will hopefully include my books at some later date. I'll most likely review more traditional fantasy, but I may review anything, so be warned.